run [1/1]
| run
chanyeol/kyungsoo.
action of sorts.
3,000
pg-13 (dks has slight anger issues so ya warning for that)
[ i said, fucking run ]
june
Quick Check is, even at the fifth hour, empty. There is nobody occupying the small corner of Langan Street except for two twenty-two year old boys. The whirring of air-conditioner supplies their conversation; not much is spoken in hot weather.
Kyungsoo wedges the toothpick between two of his teeth. His weight leans lazily onto his left foot. His arm is perched atop the counter.
“Well,” the toothpick in his mouth wobbles along with his words. He readjusts the tiny wooden pick to its rightful location, and then looks back up at the person sitting at the corner of the store, crouching and singing quietly to himself.
“What do you want?”
It’s one of those matter-of-fact “what do you want”s, the sorts that, if a stranger were to eavesdrop just at that moment, would make it seem like Kyungsoo is the guardian of sorts, always spoiling his child with new treasures.
The boy looks up from his knees. He looks across the store at Kyungso. He shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
It takes a few minutes as he saunters from one side of the store to the other, where Kyungsoo is slouching. His steps seem calculated, landing only on the white tiles, one, two, one, two. When he finally arrives, he leans down to level his height to the rack of gums, making a systematic observation of each label and brand.
When he has finished his thorough examination, he peers once again at the row of gums--Extra, Orbit, Trident--and then back at Kyungsoo. A swallow, a straightening-of-back, and then, an “I don’t want anything.”
Kyungsoo moves his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He shrugs, sharp and quick.
“I can get you anything. You don’t have to pay,” the toothpick wobbles.
“But you can’t just do that,” the boy says, as if saying so will do anything. His shoulders are tense.
Kyungsoo shrugs. “So? I work here.”
As if to demonstrate, Kyungsoo bends down and reaches into the glass case to pull out two packs of Orbit Mint gum and a pack of skittles. They land onto the table with a dull smack.
And he grins. The boy watches as the toothpick dances precariously at the tip of Kyungsoo's tongue while a rip anoints the air. Skittles vibrate onto the countertop.
He waits; the friend doesn’t reply. He taps on the skittles. They dance around. “Take it.”
“No,” The boy’s voice quivers. “I’ll just go now.”
“Fine, then.” Kyungsoo puts an orange one in his mouth, letting the candy crackle between his teeth as he watches the boy stagger outside and sit on one of the dirty plastic benches.
The air is quiet and taut with a four o’clock placidity when Kyungsoo leaves the store to walk home with Chanyeol. They don’t say much for about two blocks.
“Want gum?” Kyungsoo finally asks.
Chanyeol sighs. “Was it the one you stole?”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “I didn’t steal it. I work there.” He pulls out a stick of gum and offers it, unwrapped, to Chanyeol.
Chanyeol looks exasperated.
“How do you still have a job there?” He takes the offering carefully, like it is a bomb ready to burst.
“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo says. He stuffs the wrapper in his pocket.
They walk another block in silence. Chanyeol chews on the gum, slowly. He is thinking. His eyes are floored, staring at the point exactly one meter in front of his foremost foot.
Kyungsoo’s steps are quick. Brisk. Even on the sidewalk, his stubborn stomps are audible.
It's quiet. Kyungsoo begins to tap the sides of his thighs.
“I had a dream,” Chanyeol finally bursts. Whether he says it to get rid of Kyungsoo’s erratic thigh-drumming or because he has been harboring this thought for a while, nobody knows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t answer.
“Yesterday,” Chanyeol adds urgently.
His friend waits, tapping his thighs at a faster rhythm and staring at his small feet propelling his body forward. Step step step step step.
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo expectantly. He sighs.
“That--” He opens his mouth and then closes it. Another sigh.
"That what?"
“That they caught us,” he finally breathes out.
Kyungsoo stops walking.
“What?” The “what are you talking about” kind of what. He turns to Chanyeol, who is looking nervously at the ground, wringing his hands together with a certain regret, like I knew it, I knew it, I shouldn’t have said it.
“But--but--there’s a chance--” he tries, but Kyungsoo cuts him off.
“No, no, no.” He waves his arm impatiently. “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere." He walks in front of Chanyeol, staring up into his eyes as if he is the taller one.
"Look--Chanyeol--" and a sigh, sharp, like his personality, "--the street’s fucking empty. You can hear the fucking crickets at night. The stores don’t have long lines because there’s nobody to make long lines. The houses have fucking neat-trimmed gardens with little colorful-fucking-roses peeking out of those goddamn bushes. The people are all nice and giving and they gave us a bag of free fucking rice. This place is as heaven as heaven gets. We’re the ones who got past God’s security gates and sneaked in. There is no fucking way they’ll find us.”
“But hypothetically speaking--”
“Don’t do that whole ‘if’ thing with me again. If is for fuckers. You are not a fucker. You are Park Chanyeol. You are Park Chanyeol with 184 fucking centimeters on you. You’re Park Chanyeol who can run fast when you’re scared enough. You’re not even the one in trouble--I just--god fucking dammit. Just--” Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. “Just calm yourself, Chanyeol. I’ll tell them you’re my, my pet dog or something if they catch me. Okay?”
“But--”
Kyungsoo folds his arms.
“Fine, whatever you say. But you’re not the one getting caught, so just worry about something else. Like your fucking health.”
“What’s wrong with my health?” Chanyeol says, alarmed.
“Nothing, nothing.” Kyungsoo shakes his head quickly and starts walking forward again. “I just needed something to say.”
The neighborhood is, as Kyungsoo poignantly put it, in the middle of fucking nowhere. There are no famous people, no alumni from the local high school with a big name, no restaurants that were picked for the year’s Top Choice Award. The only people who move in are relatives during Thanksgiving or Christmas, or the occasional lost tourist asking for directions to a better place. There are gardens and trees and cricket chirps and bird songs. Everything so in line, so normal, so quiet.
Kyungsoo shuts the door to their small motel room and jumps onto the bed. The springs creak and the floor screeches and Kyungsoo can feel himself sinking into the mattress. Chanyeol sits down in a small plastic chair, crouching into an uncomfortable position to frown at the window.
“What is it now?” Kyungsoo asks the ceiling, lifting his arms above him to compare the sizes of his left and right hands.
“Nothing,” Chanyeol says quietly. He bends down to his knees and nibbles on the nail of his right index finger. “Nothing.”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo curiously. Everything about Kyungsoo makes Chanyeol nervous, but something about that kid--now sitting upright on the bed and bouncing on the mattress with a childish grin--keeps Chanyeol from simply leaving.
september
Kyungsoo’s face is barely visible from the angle that Chanyeol has on him. For one, Chanyeol is sitting, perched, in a chair. Again.
Again--if that’s the right word. But it’s normal for Chanyeol, that kind of sitting, crouching in a chair all huddled up; you wouldn’t say “again” about your breathing, would you? So, well, he’s just… sitting.
Kyungsoo is lying in the bed, sinking into the mattress. His arms are spread out. His shoes are still on, and it takes millennia before Chanyeol can muster up the voicebox to croak, “you’re getting the blankets dirty.”
There’s a spring attached to that bed, Chanyeol thinks. Because Kyungsoo shoots up like a toy. Anger paints his face.
“Fuck blankets,” he says, but there’s a hint of glee in the voice. “We’re in a fucking hotel.” He disappears into the mattress again with another creak.
“Not for long.” He whispers into his fingers, his nails which are only a few millimeters of length because what else is there to do, anyways. Kyungsoo chooses not to hear this comment.
“This place is a marketplace. A buffet.”
“Kyungsoo--”
“Don’t Kyungsoo me. I know what I’m saying.” He hops out of the bed, pounces over to Chanyeol. Chanyeol flinches.
He closes his eyes as he feels Kyungsoo pat his head, hard, but in a friendly way.
“There, there,” Kyungsoo says. “Everything’ll be okay.”
Chanyeol takes his word. Maybe it’s because he’s never heard it from anyone else before. Maybe it’s because he knows Kyungsoo is the only one who cares. Or maybe it’s because he's never really heard someone say anything with true earnest.
In the morning, though, Chanyeol opens his eyes and unfolds himself from the chair to see that the blankets on Kyungsoo's bed have gone awry, mid-motion in a craze. A hurry? Has he been taken by the police?
Alarmed, Chanyeol travels over to the bathroom. Hesitantly. The door opens with a slow protest. When there is enough room, he peeks his head in. The lights are on, but there is no one inside. Nobody behind the curtains.
The door opens with the beep of the hotel card. Chanyeol jumps.
“Went shopping for you,” he hears a happy squeal from the bed. Chanyeol’s heart sinks into his feet. There is only one thing that squeal means.
A watch. It’s in his face, dangling in between Kyungsoo’s fingers, glimmering like it’s supposed to be just that--a symbol of money and faux-happiness. But it’s not. It’s…
“...on some guy’s wrist and it was like a fucking hula-hoop on him I just had to wait for him to blink, oh my god…” Kyungsoo is laying his treasures onto the bed.
Chanyeol feels the weight of the watch in his hands. It feels like solid gold, almost, the way his hands shoot downwards every time he relaxes his shoulders. Like an invisible hand is pressing down on his palms; that kind of heavy.
“Do you like it?” Kyungsoo beams. “Put it on.”
But it’s heavy, like the weight he carries around, too. He moves his hands up and down, up and down, feeling the pressing weight of gravity. He doesn't answer.
Up and down. Up and down. Heavy, heavy. Heavy, gold. Gold, heavy.
Him? Chanyeol is heavy already. Heavy, heavy. Up, down. Up, down. He doesn’t want to add weight to himself with this watch, does he? Up, down. He lifts it up, down. No. “No.”
It escapes his lips before he knows what he is thinking; he wakes up, winces immediately, thinks about running away.
“What?” It's sharp, that "what."
The air shifts quickly; women scurry home with their children, men look up at the sky with furrowed brows because something is coming. There is a storm coming. Chanyeol bites his lip.
“I mean--”
“No? Did you just refuse?”
Chanyeol flinches. Nothing had come his way suddenly; he had flinched for the future.
Kyungsoo, in his own little island, laughs over at Chanyeol. A bitter one.
“You’re always like that, you know.” It’s coming. “Tiny voice, big body.”
Kyungsoo sits down. It always starts with him sitting down. It always, always starts sitting down.
Kyungsoo waits. Waits, and waits. Chanyeol can’t dare to say anything. Nothing is worse than responding--
And the due burst.
“What will you do in your fucking life? What are you planning to do, if all you ever do it eat your nails and crouch in chairs?”
He laughs. Cackles, more like. It’s unsettling.
“No…?” Kyungsoo says it to himself like it’s a ridiculous joke. What Chanyeol has said--a little five-year-old’s joke. A small one. Can’t mean anything. But how could they think of saying that? How ridiculous. “No…?”
He throws down a wallet. It half-bounces; Chanyeol stares at the leather backing of it. A light purple. He wonders who it had belonged to; a pretty lady with red lipstick, holding her son’s hand?
Another wallet, cold and black, joins it. It flops open and Chanyeol can see the license card of a man in his forties.
“All of this,” Kyungsoo throws down a ring, which rolls to the other side of the room, “all of this.”
Chanyeol feels hot. The air conditioning here must not be working; the whirring is there, but the feeling… the feeling isn’t.
“Alright.” Kyungsoo sighs sharply. “Don’t look at me.”
He walks over to the wallets and watches and jewelry and stomps on them with a ferocious force. Chanyeol feels the beds rattle; the room shiver in fear.
“If you’re looking at these, then,” another stomp (Chanyeol’s eyes fleet to the door--what if someone hears?), “then watch them disappear. Watch them wither. They die. They,” more stomps, “they’re fucking symbols. I’m taking these symbols. It doesn’t fucking matter.”
He looks at Chanyeol; Chanyeol looks at him.
“Oh? So you’re scared people will hear me, huh?”
He jumps, crushing his weight onto the wallets which are now half empty. Bills are ripped and dirtied by Kyungsoo’s shoes.
“This isn’t enough.” Kyungsoo marches over to his small black packpack and pulls out a large pair of scissors. Chanyeol yelps and jumps to a farther corner.
“Go, go sit in your seat,” Kyungsoo huffs, “but instead of eating your nails, why don’t you watch this show? See how it feels to watch one month’s worth of money go to waste because you--” he picks the purple wallet up “--you apparently think it’s all about justice. There is no justice. There’s no fucking justice when some people don’t have parents, some people go to jail, some people have to live like this,” the legs of the scissors part for the wallet, “this shithole of a life.”
Chanyeol stares with wide eyes as Kyungsoo makes a fist around the scissors. The leather of the wallet is tough, but Kyungsoo is tougher.
Chanyeol thinks of the mother. The mother with the red lipstick and a fur coat and a little child, “Where is my wallet? Oh, oh, I must have left it somewhere…”
“Don’t--”
“What’s that I hear?” Kyungsoo looks at Chanyeol. From the look on his face, his eyes, his brain, his heart, are all already thousands of miles away, light years away orbiting a different sun, living on a different planet. There is no stopping Kyungsoo during these moments. “Do it?”
He makes a fist, and the leather breaks with a rip.
“I’ll fucking do it for you, alright.”
december
It is almost a year since Kyungsoo had escaped. There is snow, prancing downwards, holding hands with gravity and singing songs in celebration of their freedom.
“I’ll buy you something,” Kyungsoo sings, hopping around the streets in front of Chanyeol. He turns around. “Hurry up, will you?”
Chanyeol looks into the windows of the shops. At this point, he has lost track of where they are, what country they’re in. At least he’s not killing anybody, Chanyeol tells himself.
“Like that? You like that?” Kyungsoo’s face is beside Chanyeol’s his nose pressing against the glass. “I can buy a scarf. Hell, I’ll buy two scarves!”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo, who smiles and hops into the store.
They look around; the cashier is welcoming from the side.
“You like green scarves?” He pulls a long one out of the box. “Or a red one?”
“I’ll take red,” Chanyeol says, feeling the wool in his hands. Itchy.
“I’ll take red, too, then.” Kyungsoo smiles. “I didn’t mean I’d buy you two scarves when I said that, you know. One for me, one for you.”
They look around. The keychains are pretty; they jingle and feel the right amount of heavy in Chanyeol’s hands. Kyungsoo bounces around Chanyeol as he takes in the atmosphere of the shop slowly.
“Let’s go, come on.” Kyungsoo spins the end of his scarf. “We have to look at other places.”
“Alright.”
When they’re a block away from the shop, Kyungsoo still has a beam on his face.
“What?” Chanyeol asks, but he knows.
Kyungsoo pulls his hands out of his pockets. “This!”
“A keychain.”
“You know. I know you like holding things. I got seven of them,” he pulls out six more. They gather in his small hands. “They were too overpriced.”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo, then at the keychains. He picks out one that he likes, two little boys ice-skating together.
“Thanks.”
“Anything for you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo bounces forward. “Let’s go into this shop now.”
Chanyeol knows they are feeling followed.
But he knows that every time, and every time, they have never been followed.
This time, though. He turns around; there is nobody suspicious behind them.
“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol’s voice is tense. His left hand holds onto Kyungsoo’s elbow.
“What?” Kyungsoo looks at Chanyeol. A nonchalant blink passes his face.
He looks back, then whispers, “We’re being followed.”
Momentarily, Kyungsoo’s face disappears. But it reappears, with a “Don’t fuck with me, not right now, Chanyeol.”
“But we are.”
“Alright, alright,” Kyungsoo waves it away. He's used to it by now, used to Chanyeol's paranoia. Kyungsoo has to admit he feels a tinge of sorrow for the kid. “But first let’s get ice cream.”
The ice cream is soft on his lips, melting into his mouth with a sweet chill. He loves how it feels when he brings the ice cream close to his face. The tiny mint chocolate chip breeze tickles the tip of his nose.
“Now, now.” Kyungsoo puts a reproachful arm on Chanyeol’s. “Don’t breathe the ice cream too much.”
Chanyeol smiles softly, then licks another bit off carefully.
Kyungsoo turns around to look at the store name. “Baskin Bobbins, huh,” he says, his head still turned back. “A good store.”
“Yeah,” Chanyeol agrees. He loves mint. And then a chunk of ice cream drops onto his scarf, the scarf which is around his neck. It taints the redness of the wool--Chanyeol is alarmed. He cries out in horror. “This..!”
“Just,” Kyungsoo wipes it off. There is still a mark, but Kyungsoo is already licking the ice cream off his fingers. “Just leave it. Whatever. Let’s walk a little quicker.”
“Are we being followed?” Chanyeol's blood jumps.
“No.”
But Kyungsoo’s hand is on Chanyeol’s back. Clearly something is not right.
“We’re being followed.”
“No, we’re not, but when I tell you to run, you’re going to run, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, but his heart is already bouncing around in his head, inventing new rhythms.
“Faster. Walk faster.” He stops, looks back, curses. “Never mind--they're here. Fucking--just run. Run. Run.”
“Run?”
“I said, fucking run!” And Chanyeol runs, looking backwards, bumping into people. They make comments, glare at him, he apologizes, apologizes, I just have to run, my friend is wanted for something terrible, we have to go, we have to go… Please, pardon, pardon…
Gunshots. So they’re serious? Who are they? Not the police. Not Kyungsoo’s old enemies? They can’t be--or can they…
Gunshots, and Kyungsoo is shouting not too far behind him. People are screaming and running around. Chanyeol closes his eyes shut and begins to pummel forward, pushing past people, through people, getting away… his heart has shriveled into a raisin.
Gunshots. Gunshots. Gunshots. Chanyeol slows down, where is Kyungsoo? He turns around. Kyungsoo is right behind him, just a few people back. He decides to wait.
“Chanyeol, oh my fucking god, just r
u
n--”
He’s shot.
Kyungsoo stares as Chanyeol crumples to the ground within seconds, the fear still painted on his face. He looks down at his clearly dying friend, at his large body, at his weight, at will I run away and live and never see him again, or will I stay, will I stay and surely die, will I? Will I?
He looks, he looks. He looks. Dying. Right through the chest. Dying. They’re getting closer, the gunshots.. the gunshots.
Kyungsoo stares. He stares.
“Fucking run.” Hoarse. A whisper.
Kyungsoo runs.
chanyeol/kyungsoo.
action of sorts.
3,000
pg-13 (dks has slight anger issues so ya warning for that)
[ i said, fucking run ]
june
Quick Check is, even at the fifth hour, empty. There is nobody occupying the small corner of Langan Street except for two twenty-two year old boys. The whirring of air-conditioner supplies their conversation; not much is spoken in hot weather.
Kyungsoo wedges the toothpick between two of his teeth. His weight leans lazily onto his left foot. His arm is perched atop the counter.
“Well,” the toothpick in his mouth wobbles along with his words. He readjusts the tiny wooden pick to its rightful location, and then looks back up at the person sitting at the corner of the store, crouching and singing quietly to himself.
“What do you want?”
It’s one of those matter-of-fact “what do you want”s, the sorts that, if a stranger were to eavesdrop just at that moment, would make it seem like Kyungsoo is the guardian of sorts, always spoiling his child with new treasures.
The boy looks up from his knees. He looks across the store at Kyungso. He shrugs.
“I don’t know.”
It takes a few minutes as he saunters from one side of the store to the other, where Kyungsoo is slouching. His steps seem calculated, landing only on the white tiles, one, two, one, two. When he finally arrives, he leans down to level his height to the rack of gums, making a systematic observation of each label and brand.
When he has finished his thorough examination, he peers once again at the row of gums--Extra, Orbit, Trident--and then back at Kyungsoo. A swallow, a straightening-of-back, and then, an “I don’t want anything.”
Kyungsoo moves his toothpick to the other side of his mouth. He shrugs, sharp and quick.
“I can get you anything. You don’t have to pay,” the toothpick wobbles.
“But you can’t just do that,” the boy says, as if saying so will do anything. His shoulders are tense.
Kyungsoo shrugs. “So? I work here.”
As if to demonstrate, Kyungsoo bends down and reaches into the glass case to pull out two packs of Orbit Mint gum and a pack of skittles. They land onto the table with a dull smack.
And he grins. The boy watches as the toothpick dances precariously at the tip of Kyungsoo's tongue while a rip anoints the air. Skittles vibrate onto the countertop.
He waits; the friend doesn’t reply. He taps on the skittles. They dance around. “Take it.”
“No,” The boy’s voice quivers. “I’ll just go now.”
“Fine, then.” Kyungsoo puts an orange one in his mouth, letting the candy crackle between his teeth as he watches the boy stagger outside and sit on one of the dirty plastic benches.
The air is quiet and taut with a four o’clock placidity when Kyungsoo leaves the store to walk home with Chanyeol. They don’t say much for about two blocks.
“Want gum?” Kyungsoo finally asks.
Chanyeol sighs. “Was it the one you stole?”
Kyungsoo shrugs. “I didn’t steal it. I work there.” He pulls out a stick of gum and offers it, unwrapped, to Chanyeol.
Chanyeol looks exasperated.
“How do you still have a job there?” He takes the offering carefully, like it is a bomb ready to burst.
“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo says. He stuffs the wrapper in his pocket.
They walk another block in silence. Chanyeol chews on the gum, slowly. He is thinking. His eyes are floored, staring at the point exactly one meter in front of his foremost foot.
Kyungsoo’s steps are quick. Brisk. Even on the sidewalk, his stubborn stomps are audible.
It's quiet. Kyungsoo begins to tap the sides of his thighs.
“I had a dream,” Chanyeol finally bursts. Whether he says it to get rid of Kyungsoo’s erratic thigh-drumming or because he has been harboring this thought for a while, nobody knows.
Kyungsoo doesn’t answer.
“Yesterday,” Chanyeol adds urgently.
His friend waits, tapping his thighs at a faster rhythm and staring at his small feet propelling his body forward. Step step step step step.
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo expectantly. He sighs.
“That--” He opens his mouth and then closes it. Another sigh.
"That what?"
“That they caught us,” he finally breathes out.
Kyungsoo stops walking.
“What?” The “what are you talking about” kind of what. He turns to Chanyeol, who is looking nervously at the ground, wringing his hands together with a certain regret, like I knew it, I knew it, I shouldn’t have said it.
“But--but--there’s a chance--” he tries, but Kyungsoo cuts him off.
“No, no, no.” He waves his arm impatiently. “How many times do I have to tell you? We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere." He walks in front of Chanyeol, staring up into his eyes as if he is the taller one.
"Look--Chanyeol--" and a sigh, sharp, like his personality, "--the street’s fucking empty. You can hear the fucking crickets at night. The stores don’t have long lines because there’s nobody to make long lines. The houses have fucking neat-trimmed gardens with little colorful-fucking-roses peeking out of those goddamn bushes. The people are all nice and giving and they gave us a bag of free fucking rice. This place is as heaven as heaven gets. We’re the ones who got past God’s security gates and sneaked in. There is no fucking way they’ll find us.”
“But hypothetically speaking--”
“Don’t do that whole ‘if’ thing with me again. If is for fuckers. You are not a fucker. You are Park Chanyeol. You are Park Chanyeol with 184 fucking centimeters on you. You’re Park Chanyeol who can run fast when you’re scared enough. You’re not even the one in trouble--I just--god fucking dammit. Just--” Kyungsoo takes a deep breath. “Just calm yourself, Chanyeol. I’ll tell them you’re my, my pet dog or something if they catch me. Okay?”
“But--”
Kyungsoo folds his arms.
“Fine, whatever you say. But you’re not the one getting caught, so just worry about something else. Like your fucking health.”
“What’s wrong with my health?” Chanyeol says, alarmed.
“Nothing, nothing.” Kyungsoo shakes his head quickly and starts walking forward again. “I just needed something to say.”
The neighborhood is, as Kyungsoo poignantly put it, in the middle of fucking nowhere. There are no famous people, no alumni from the local high school with a big name, no restaurants that were picked for the year’s Top Choice Award. The only people who move in are relatives during Thanksgiving or Christmas, or the occasional lost tourist asking for directions to a better place. There are gardens and trees and cricket chirps and bird songs. Everything so in line, so normal, so quiet.
Kyungsoo shuts the door to their small motel room and jumps onto the bed. The springs creak and the floor screeches and Kyungsoo can feel himself sinking into the mattress. Chanyeol sits down in a small plastic chair, crouching into an uncomfortable position to frown at the window.
“What is it now?” Kyungsoo asks the ceiling, lifting his arms above him to compare the sizes of his left and right hands.
“Nothing,” Chanyeol says quietly. He bends down to his knees and nibbles on the nail of his right index finger. “Nothing.”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo curiously. Everything about Kyungsoo makes Chanyeol nervous, but something about that kid--now sitting upright on the bed and bouncing on the mattress with a childish grin--keeps Chanyeol from simply leaving.
september
Kyungsoo’s face is barely visible from the angle that Chanyeol has on him. For one, Chanyeol is sitting, perched, in a chair. Again.
Again--if that’s the right word. But it’s normal for Chanyeol, that kind of sitting, crouching in a chair all huddled up; you wouldn’t say “again” about your breathing, would you? So, well, he’s just… sitting.
Kyungsoo is lying in the bed, sinking into the mattress. His arms are spread out. His shoes are still on, and it takes millennia before Chanyeol can muster up the voicebox to croak, “you’re getting the blankets dirty.”
There’s a spring attached to that bed, Chanyeol thinks. Because Kyungsoo shoots up like a toy. Anger paints his face.
“Fuck blankets,” he says, but there’s a hint of glee in the voice. “We’re in a fucking hotel.” He disappears into the mattress again with another creak.
“Not for long.” He whispers into his fingers, his nails which are only a few millimeters of length because what else is there to do, anyways. Kyungsoo chooses not to hear this comment.
“This place is a marketplace. A buffet.”
“Kyungsoo--”
“Don’t Kyungsoo me. I know what I’m saying.” He hops out of the bed, pounces over to Chanyeol. Chanyeol flinches.
He closes his eyes as he feels Kyungsoo pat his head, hard, but in a friendly way.
“There, there,” Kyungsoo says. “Everything’ll be okay.”
Chanyeol takes his word. Maybe it’s because he’s never heard it from anyone else before. Maybe it’s because he knows Kyungsoo is the only one who cares. Or maybe it’s because he's never really heard someone say anything with true earnest.
In the morning, though, Chanyeol opens his eyes and unfolds himself from the chair to see that the blankets on Kyungsoo's bed have gone awry, mid-motion in a craze. A hurry? Has he been taken by the police?
Alarmed, Chanyeol travels over to the bathroom. Hesitantly. The door opens with a slow protest. When there is enough room, he peeks his head in. The lights are on, but there is no one inside. Nobody behind the curtains.
The door opens with the beep of the hotel card. Chanyeol jumps.
“Went shopping for you,” he hears a happy squeal from the bed. Chanyeol’s heart sinks into his feet. There is only one thing that squeal means.
A watch. It’s in his face, dangling in between Kyungsoo’s fingers, glimmering like it’s supposed to be just that--a symbol of money and faux-happiness. But it’s not. It’s…
“...on some guy’s wrist and it was like a fucking hula-hoop on him I just had to wait for him to blink, oh my god…” Kyungsoo is laying his treasures onto the bed.
Chanyeol feels the weight of the watch in his hands. It feels like solid gold, almost, the way his hands shoot downwards every time he relaxes his shoulders. Like an invisible hand is pressing down on his palms; that kind of heavy.
“Do you like it?” Kyungsoo beams. “Put it on.”
But it’s heavy, like the weight he carries around, too. He moves his hands up and down, up and down, feeling the pressing weight of gravity. He doesn't answer.
Up and down. Up and down. Heavy, heavy. Heavy, gold. Gold, heavy.
Him? Chanyeol is heavy already. Heavy, heavy. Up, down. Up, down. He doesn’t want to add weight to himself with this watch, does he? Up, down. He lifts it up, down. No. “No.”
It escapes his lips before he knows what he is thinking; he wakes up, winces immediately, thinks about running away.
“What?” It's sharp, that "what."
The air shifts quickly; women scurry home with their children, men look up at the sky with furrowed brows because something is coming. There is a storm coming. Chanyeol bites his lip.
“I mean--”
“No? Did you just refuse?”
Chanyeol flinches. Nothing had come his way suddenly; he had flinched for the future.
Kyungsoo, in his own little island, laughs over at Chanyeol. A bitter one.
“You’re always like that, you know.” It’s coming. “Tiny voice, big body.”
Kyungsoo sits down. It always starts with him sitting down. It always, always starts sitting down.
Kyungsoo waits. Waits, and waits. Chanyeol can’t dare to say anything. Nothing is worse than responding--
And the due burst.
“What will you do in your fucking life? What are you planning to do, if all you ever do it eat your nails and crouch in chairs?”
He laughs. Cackles, more like. It’s unsettling.
“No…?” Kyungsoo says it to himself like it’s a ridiculous joke. What Chanyeol has said--a little five-year-old’s joke. A small one. Can’t mean anything. But how could they think of saying that? How ridiculous. “No…?”
He throws down a wallet. It half-bounces; Chanyeol stares at the leather backing of it. A light purple. He wonders who it had belonged to; a pretty lady with red lipstick, holding her son’s hand?
Another wallet, cold and black, joins it. It flops open and Chanyeol can see the license card of a man in his forties.
“All of this,” Kyungsoo throws down a ring, which rolls to the other side of the room, “all of this.”
Chanyeol feels hot. The air conditioning here must not be working; the whirring is there, but the feeling… the feeling isn’t.
“Alright.” Kyungsoo sighs sharply. “Don’t look at me.”
He walks over to the wallets and watches and jewelry and stomps on them with a ferocious force. Chanyeol feels the beds rattle; the room shiver in fear.
“If you’re looking at these, then,” another stomp (Chanyeol’s eyes fleet to the door--what if someone hears?), “then watch them disappear. Watch them wither. They die. They,” more stomps, “they’re fucking symbols. I’m taking these symbols. It doesn’t fucking matter.”
He looks at Chanyeol; Chanyeol looks at him.
“Oh? So you’re scared people will hear me, huh?”
He jumps, crushing his weight onto the wallets which are now half empty. Bills are ripped and dirtied by Kyungsoo’s shoes.
“This isn’t enough.” Kyungsoo marches over to his small black packpack and pulls out a large pair of scissors. Chanyeol yelps and jumps to a farther corner.
“Go, go sit in your seat,” Kyungsoo huffs, “but instead of eating your nails, why don’t you watch this show? See how it feels to watch one month’s worth of money go to waste because you--” he picks the purple wallet up “--you apparently think it’s all about justice. There is no justice. There’s no fucking justice when some people don’t have parents, some people go to jail, some people have to live like this,” the legs of the scissors part for the wallet, “this shithole of a life.”
Chanyeol stares with wide eyes as Kyungsoo makes a fist around the scissors. The leather of the wallet is tough, but Kyungsoo is tougher.
Chanyeol thinks of the mother. The mother with the red lipstick and a fur coat and a little child, “Where is my wallet? Oh, oh, I must have left it somewhere…”
“Don’t--”
“What’s that I hear?” Kyungsoo looks at Chanyeol. From the look on his face, his eyes, his brain, his heart, are all already thousands of miles away, light years away orbiting a different sun, living on a different planet. There is no stopping Kyungsoo during these moments. “Do it?”
He makes a fist, and the leather breaks with a rip.
“I’ll fucking do it for you, alright.”
december
It is almost a year since Kyungsoo had escaped. There is snow, prancing downwards, holding hands with gravity and singing songs in celebration of their freedom.
“I’ll buy you something,” Kyungsoo sings, hopping around the streets in front of Chanyeol. He turns around. “Hurry up, will you?”
Chanyeol looks into the windows of the shops. At this point, he has lost track of where they are, what country they’re in. At least he’s not killing anybody, Chanyeol tells himself.
“Like that? You like that?” Kyungsoo’s face is beside Chanyeol’s his nose pressing against the glass. “I can buy a scarf. Hell, I’ll buy two scarves!”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo, who smiles and hops into the store.
They look around; the cashier is welcoming from the side.
“You like green scarves?” He pulls a long one out of the box. “Or a red one?”
“I’ll take red,” Chanyeol says, feeling the wool in his hands. Itchy.
“I’ll take red, too, then.” Kyungsoo smiles. “I didn’t mean I’d buy you two scarves when I said that, you know. One for me, one for you.”
They look around. The keychains are pretty; they jingle and feel the right amount of heavy in Chanyeol’s hands. Kyungsoo bounces around Chanyeol as he takes in the atmosphere of the shop slowly.
“Let’s go, come on.” Kyungsoo spins the end of his scarf. “We have to look at other places.”
“Alright.”
When they’re a block away from the shop, Kyungsoo still has a beam on his face.
“What?” Chanyeol asks, but he knows.
Kyungsoo pulls his hands out of his pockets. “This!”
“A keychain.”
“You know. I know you like holding things. I got seven of them,” he pulls out six more. They gather in his small hands. “They were too overpriced.”
Chanyeol looks at Kyungsoo, then at the keychains. He picks out one that he likes, two little boys ice-skating together.
“Thanks.”
“Anything for you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo bounces forward. “Let’s go into this shop now.”
Chanyeol knows they are feeling followed.
But he knows that every time, and every time, they have never been followed.
This time, though. He turns around; there is nobody suspicious behind them.
“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol’s voice is tense. His left hand holds onto Kyungsoo’s elbow.
“What?” Kyungsoo looks at Chanyeol. A nonchalant blink passes his face.
He looks back, then whispers, “We’re being followed.”
Momentarily, Kyungsoo’s face disappears. But it reappears, with a “Don’t fuck with me, not right now, Chanyeol.”
“But we are.”
“Alright, alright,” Kyungsoo waves it away. He's used to it by now, used to Chanyeol's paranoia. Kyungsoo has to admit he feels a tinge of sorrow for the kid. “But first let’s get ice cream.”
The ice cream is soft on his lips, melting into his mouth with a sweet chill. He loves how it feels when he brings the ice cream close to his face. The tiny mint chocolate chip breeze tickles the tip of his nose.
“Now, now.” Kyungsoo puts a reproachful arm on Chanyeol’s. “Don’t breathe the ice cream too much.”
Chanyeol smiles softly, then licks another bit off carefully.
Kyungsoo turns around to look at the store name. “Baskin Bobbins, huh,” he says, his head still turned back. “A good store.”
“Yeah,” Chanyeol agrees. He loves mint. And then a chunk of ice cream drops onto his scarf, the scarf which is around his neck. It taints the redness of the wool--Chanyeol is alarmed. He cries out in horror. “This..!”
“Just,” Kyungsoo wipes it off. There is still a mark, but Kyungsoo is already licking the ice cream off his fingers. “Just leave it. Whatever. Let’s walk a little quicker.”
“Are we being followed?” Chanyeol's blood jumps.
“No.”
But Kyungsoo’s hand is on Chanyeol’s back. Clearly something is not right.
“We’re being followed.”
“No, we’re not, but when I tell you to run, you’re going to run, okay?”
“Okay,” he says, but his heart is already bouncing around in his head, inventing new rhythms.
“Faster. Walk faster.” He stops, looks back, curses. “Never mind--they're here. Fucking--just run. Run. Run.”
“Run?”
“I said, fucking run!” And Chanyeol runs, looking backwards, bumping into people. They make comments, glare at him, he apologizes, apologizes, I just have to run, my friend is wanted for something terrible, we have to go, we have to go… Please, pardon, pardon…
Gunshots. So they’re serious? Who are they? Not the police. Not Kyungsoo’s old enemies? They can’t be--or can they…
Gunshots, and Kyungsoo is shouting not too far behind him. People are screaming and running around. Chanyeol closes his eyes shut and begins to pummel forward, pushing past people, through people, getting away… his heart has shriveled into a raisin.
Gunshots. Gunshots. Gunshots. Chanyeol slows down, where is Kyungsoo? He turns around. Kyungsoo is right behind him, just a few people back. He decides to wait.
“Chanyeol, oh my fucking god, just r
u
n--”
He’s shot.
Kyungsoo stares as Chanyeol crumples to the ground within seconds, the fear still painted on his face. He looks down at his clearly dying friend, at his large body, at his weight, at will I run away and live and never see him again, or will I stay, will I stay and surely die, will I? Will I?
He looks, he looks. He looks. Dying. Right through the chest. Dying. They’re getting closer, the gunshots.. the gunshots.
Kyungsoo stares. He stares.
“Fucking run.” Hoarse. A whisper.
Kyungsoo runs.